Court seems ready to affirm right to own gun in D.C.

by Dave Keating | March 19, 2008 at 01:25 am

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The new conservative-dominated Supreme Court has made some decisions in small cases so far exhibiting its new ideological tilt, but this will be the first big decision showing the court's swing on a hot-button issue. The court is virtually certain to rule unequivacly on a citizen's right to carry a gun for the first time in its history.

A majority of the Supreme Court appeared ready Tuesday to embrace, for the first time in the country's history, an interpretation of the Second Amendment that protects the right to own a gun for personal use.

That may be the easy part.

The harder question in the case challenging Washington, D.C.'s, handgun ban is what kind of restrictions the government could constitutionally place, in the name of public safety, on the newly recognized right.